


and oh this too shall pass

by besidemethewholedamntime



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, canon compliant to 5x12, contains 5x12 spoilers, semi-happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-30 15:48:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13954866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: "The most terrifying thing about all of it is that he knows it’s happened all before. " He needs to break the loop but he doesn't know how. Fitzsimmons fight to save the world.(Canon-compliant to 5x12. Please heed the warnings.)





	and oh this too shall pass

**Author's Note:**

> I literally started this two and a half hours ago because the idea came to me and I was so excited to have an idea of my own that I wrote this very quickly so any mistakes are mine. I know it's a little bit sad (a lot) but that being said, I hope you enjoy it, and find it in your heart to forgive me.  
> (Also, tumblr: 'besidemethewholedamntime' in case someone wants to come and freak out with me over THE WEDDING AND THE GRANDCHILD over there :D )  
> Title and Song: 'Gale Song' by The Lumineers

_'Cause I don't wanna go_   
_But it's time to leave_   
_You'll be on my mind, my destiny_

_-x-_

 

The night after they find out about Deke, they hold each other tighter.

The news has been received with mixed emotions. After all, finding that a person who wasn’t the worst they had ever encountered but could only be described as a nuisance at best was the son of a child you haven’t even had yet was… confusing to say the least. Also realising that moments after you had met said grandson that you had uttered the words ‘Kill him, he’s a snake’ and ‘I’m going to cut his throat open’ didn’t exactly help to sort out all of the feelings. The explanation, at least, did help them to understand that strange feeling they had about Deke, deep in their chests. Something almost like _fondness._

Except it’s so much bigger than the feelings they have to sort out.

They have a _daughter._

Who _dies._

Fitz holds Jemma tighter, so tight that she would wake up if she were asleep. Except she isn’t asleep; neither of them are asleep. They just aren’t talking because they don’t want to worry each other. They haven’t talked about it yet, alone.

Fitz takes a deep breath and begins, being the brave one.

“I can’t believe a daughter of ours names her child _Deke._ ”

It gets a weak chuckle out of Jemma, and she rolls over so she is facing him. Her face looks oh so tired, but she tries to smile anyway.

“Maybe it’s his father’s influence. Maybe his mother-”

But then she cuts off, because Deke’s mother is their daughter and nothing is quite the same.

They give up the pretence.

“We have to change the world, Fitz,” Jemma whispers. Tears choke her voice, cling to her eyelashes.

“I know,” he whispers back, unsurprised to feel tears burning his eyes.

“We have to break the loop. We just have to. I can’t… I can’t…” She gives up, but he knows what she means. He can’t either.

“Shh, I know. I know.”

He knows what he has to do. He just doesn’t know _how_ to do it.

Jemma clings to him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. Her tears gather in the hollow of his neck and this steals all the words from him. Holding her tighter, he lets himself cry too.

Tomorrow is the time for fighting but tonight? Tonight is for grieving.

-x-

Jemma calls to him nervously one morning, and the tone in her voice makes him drop everything and rush to where she is.

He finds her in the bathroom, staring into the sink.

Inside sit four pregnancy tests (one and then three replicates to ensure reliability – even after all of this, science still prevails). Inside them, four pink plus signs are cheerily displayed.

“Wow,” he breathes. Turning to Jemma, he finds her smiling through tears.

“I’m excited.” She says it like a confession, like it’s some god-awful sin.

And he cannot lie. “Me too, Jemma.”

But her bottom lip begins to tremble and he holds her tightly. He is excited, incredibly so. It’s not a lie. It’s just that no matter how excited he may be, the fear is incredibly tangible. He can almost taste it at the back of his throat.

“We still have time to change it, don’t we? We still have time?” The words are mumbled into his chest and they sound like a prayer.

“We still have time,” he confirms, though Fitz knows he isn’t convincing either of them.

They decide to hold of telling anybody just yet, using the excuse ‘ _it’s too early to tell’_ but knowing it’s not the truth. If they tell everybody, they must tell Deke also. His presence means the future is not fixed, that they are still stuck in a loop. Fitz doesn’t want him to disappear, far from it, but he knows that if the future is really fixed, if they have really broken the time loop, then he won’t be here anymore. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but the reality of it is that breaking the loop gives a better future for a different version of Deke and that has to be okay.

That night they don’t go to bed, but stay up working on calculations, Fitz risking glances at Jemma every so often and wondering how on earth he’s been able to go through this so many times before.

-x-

“Fitz, are you okay?”

Fitz’s thought stream is broken by Daisy, who stands at the door of his room, eyebrow raised in concern.

“’Course.” He frowns, noticing an error in an equation. “What’s up?”

She gives a quick glance around the room, pinned with schematics and calculations. He can see why she would think he isn’t okay, and he supposes in the grand scheme of things he isn’t. His wife is eight months pregnant with their daughter and that daughter’s son is still in the present which means the future isn’t fixed and that daughter is going to die in a horrific dystopian future.

But right here? In this very moment? Fitz is fine.

“Jemma’s doing her ultrasound right now.” Daisy jerks her thumb in the direction of the medical facilities. “She said not to bother you but um…” and then her face goes so soft that he almost can’t stand it. “I thought you’d want to see her, you know? See her and um, hear her heartbeat.”

There’s a pang of regret. Yes, he has been working on the machine a lot but so has Jemma. She should have told him about the ultrasound. He would have been there in a second.

Fitz rushes to the medical facility, with Daisy not far behind. There’s Jemma on the bed and his daughter, only visible for now on a screen though not for much longer.

Jemma looks up at him. “I thought I told you not to bother him, Daisy.” Then she smiles warmly at both of them. She gestures for Fitz with her free hand, the other holding the ultrasound wand.

“Here, listen,” and she presses a button before squeezing his hand tight.

The sound fills the room. Looking at his wife and then at Daisy. He sees both of them beaming, happy tears in their eyes.

But Jemma’s hand still squeezes his tightly, and he knows that no matter the happiness of the moment, there is still a palpable fear.

After a few moments she whispers, “How is the schematics coming along?”

“Good.” He whispers, bending down and kissing her on the forehead. “They’re coming along good.”

He knows she sees though his lies but doesn’t call him out on it, in this moment needing to believe.

-x-

Their daughter Sarah is born on a stormy day.

The skies rage outside, but inside it is all surprisingly calm.

Jemma is in labour for only a few hours, and with May acting as pseudo-doctor for what Jemma cannot do herself, and with Fitz by her side, holding her hair back and kissing her forehead and saying that she can do this, she pushes their daughter into the world at exactly eleven minutes past four.

When she is handed to Fitz, he swears the world stops turning for a moment.

Their daughter is incredibly tiny, but he notices every intricate detail. Every small, incredibly perfect, detail. She looks up at him, eyes wide and so utterly blue that he knows they will never change.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Jemma whispers, sweat glistening on her forehead and wisps of hair framing her face.

To Fitz, they are both incredible.

He doesn’t trust himself to speak, so only nods. The words are choking his throat; there are too many he wants to say but he doesn’t know what ones to select for this moment. In the end, he doesn’t say anything, only beams at his wife.

He loves her so incredibly much. Them both, so incredibly much.

Once the team has all had a chance to coo over Sarah, and once Jemma has drifted off into a well-deserved sleep, he takes his new-born daughter for a walk around the medical facility, knowing that if he strays too far from Jemma then the invisible chord that connects her to the baby in his arms will pull and awaken her from a sleep she so desperately needs.

Fitz looks down into his daughter’s face, his heart clenching at how much he loves her. It’s a funny thing, to love another being as much as he loves Jemma. Once upon a time he would have doubted it was possible.

Once upon a time he doubted a lot of things were possible.

“I promise to you,” begins, stroking Sarah’s face with his thumb. “I promise that I’ll fix this. I’ll save the world.”

Fitz’s arms cradle her just a little tighter, and he feels tears on his face. His voice begins to give way.

“I promise I’ll save you.”

-x-

When Robin suddenly comes out with a prediction for Jemma’s death, he loses it.

Fitz isn’t proud of the way he handles it, and later he’ll feel bad for the exchange with May. He hopes she’ll understand. He hopes Robin, somehow, will forgive him.

But it’s Jemma’s _death._

Jemma’s _death._ And because they are stuck in a loop it keeps on happening again and again and again.

Jemma dies _every single time._

He goes for a walk after depositing Robin with May, too distraught to see his wife and daughter. He goes for a walk and punches a walk and, cradling his hand to his chest, crumbles in a corner and cries until he feels as though he is brittle.

Telling Jemma is hard, one of the hardest things he has ever done, but he knows he could never keep it from her.

She is bouncing Sarah on her knee, his daughter gurgling away and fidgeting with a stuffed toy. One look in his eyes, his tear-stained cheeks, his purple hand and fear overcomes her face.

“What is it?” She asks, in a voice that means she really doesn’t want to find out.

Telling her is hard, but the way her bottom lip trembles and she presses Sarah to her chest, dropping a chaste kiss on her curly brown baby hair breaks his heart.

Jemma says nothing for an achingly long time. Fitz says nothing also, at a complete and utter loss.

“Make sure it means something, Fitz.”

Her voice is wobbly but resolute, and in her eyes, he sees a grim determination.

“What?” his own voice is hoarse, as though he is aged a thousand years.

“Make it mean something.” Jemma’s voice is stronger now, and though there are tears present, she does not let them fall. She begins to shake her head. “I don’t want it to be for nothing so if I have to…” she breaks off, composes herself, and tries again. “If I have to die then make sure it means something.”

He can’t think of her dying, can’t and won’t, but he nods anyway because when has he ever been able to deny her anything?

“Of course, Jemma. Of course I-”

But the sob jumps out of jumps out of his mouth and cuts him off. Jemma is over to him in a second but he’s drowning and it’s worse than before because there’s no chance that she will live this time. Jemma’s holding him and promising it will be alright but she isn’t convinced  and Sarah, always perceptive, starts to cry to and he can’t do anything to comfort the two of them because he can’t breathe and this time he’s too aware of it.

There’s a giant count-down clock ticking and soon it will reach zero.

The most terrifying thing about all of it is that he knows it’s happened all before.

-x-

They don’t talk anymore about breaking the loop.

They know it’s far too late for them.

-x-

They focus on the schematics for the machine.

At least if they won’t save the world, they have to make sure someone else can carry on for them. They have to make sure that the next versions of themselves break the loop.

They have to ensure that, somehow, they get their happy ending.

-x-

Fitz is entirely unprepared when it happens.

It’s not as though he forgot about it, he just thought there would be a sign of some sort when the day would eventually come.

There is no sign. There’s no warning. Jemma is here and alive and laughing with him one moment.

And the next she is dead, unmoving on the ground, and Fitz can do nothing except sob over her broken body.

 _No._ It’s all a haze. Her hand is still warm in his. Perfect.

She was perfect.

It meant something. At least he could tell her that. It meant something. It wasn’t for nothing. It-

He turns away and retches but nothing comes up. Clutching her hand tightly, he begins to mutter apologies.

Someone tries to move him away, remind him gently it’s time to go, that they can’t stay here, that it’s dangerous.

“We can’t leave her,” he mumbles, small and feeble.

Someone else promises they’ll bring her but he thinks they might be lying.

Fitz is led back to the Zephyr. He’s lucky there’s someone gently guiding him because he doesn’t think he could do it on his own. A ring is pressed into his hand and he clutches it tightly.

Suddenly there’s someone he remembers. “Where’s Sarah?” His voice is incredibly high with panic. “Where is she?”

“Mack has her,” a voice- he thinks it might be Elena – soothes. “It will be alright, Fitz. We are here.”

“Jemma was here, too,” he says brokenly, “and now she’s gone.”

And then he sobs great, big, heaving sobs and the world spins and he falls into a deep, dark, hole and he finds that he doesn’t even care.

-x-

“Sarah.”

His daughter looks up from where she is colouring with Mack. His eyes melt with sympathy but Fitz has no spare energy right now, all of gathered towards the moment where he has to tell his daughter that his mother’s dead.

“Hey, Sarah, I’m gonna go now but I’ll see you real soon, yeah?”

Sarah beams up at him. “Of course, Uncle Mack. You still have to teach me how valve trains regulate fuel intake in car engines.”

“I will do that.” He ruffles her hair but there’s a look of pain in his eyes. Fitz wonders if it’s because this is how his daughter might have been, or of it’s because she is so much like Jemma. Perhaps a little bit of both. “I’ll see you later, kiddo.”

“Bye!” Sarah waves, and then focuses her attention to Fitz. Her azure eyes, so like his in colour but Jemma’s in expression, shine brightly. “Daddy!”

And she runs to him, throwing herself around his legs. He picks her up. Once she was so small that her head nestled in the crook of his elbow and her feet barely grazed his wrist.

“Sarah I…” he chokes. Tries again. “I have something to tell you.”

It’s awful, more than Fitz ever could have imagined it being. She eventually cries herself to sleep on his shoulder. He lays her down on her bed, tucking her in gently, and, making sure her baby monitor is on and that an alarm will sound on the device at his wrist should she even so much as sniffle, Fitz makes his way to the room with all of the schematics.

Systematically, he begins tearing them all down and scrunching them into one big ball. There’s a weight on his chest that won’t go away. It hurts so very much to breathe. His heart aches with longing.

Sobs begin to rack his body but he pays them no heed, focussed only on tearing down the very designs that built up his hope and destroyed it.

He remembers, suddenly, what Deke said, about how his mother died and he thinks about Sarah, tear tacks drying on her face. He thinks about Jemma, her blood on his hands and the way she wanted it to mean something.

Beginning to pummel the now bare wall just to feel something other than his heart breaking, Fitz yells until his lungs are on fire and his throat his raw.

And then he yells some more.

-x-

He goes into a stupor, focused only on him and Sarah.

“Son,” Coulson says to him one day. Worry is etched onto his face. Over his shoulder stands Elena and May, both of them looking equally as concerned. “You need to stop this. It’s not what Jemma would have wanted.”

And oh God, how Fitz _hates_ him for that. Hasn’t he already used that line on him once? Hasn’t he already done enough? It’s all because of him, doesn’t he see? It’s all his fault.

(He knows that it’s not, not really. That time is fixed. But it helps to hate Coulson, just a little bit. So, he does.)

“And how do you know what Jemma would have wanted?” He seethes bitterly.

Coulson looks at a loss, and in the end it’s May who steps up to call him out on it. The only one brave enough to, even if she is fighting back tears.

Fitz knows they’ve lost a member of their family, too. He knows that. But he lost his _wife,_ Sarah lost her _mother._ This horrible, nightmare of a future is coming true and he’s powerless to stop it.

“She wanted someone to carry on after her,” May says simply. “You heard her say so yourself.”

Jemma wanted it to _mean_ something.

Jemma wanted him to carry on saving the world. Maybe not this one, but to make it so he could save the next. At one point, that was what he wanted to.

And then she was gone and it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Sarah has crept into the room, her eyes wide and scared, not fully comprehending the stand-off before her. She still cries to sleep every night, and sometimes she wakes up calling for her mother. All Fitz has to offer her is pictures and videos and stories.

“Daddy?”

Elena moves to take her from the room but Sarah shrugs her off and runs to Fitz, looking up at him.

“What did mummy want?”

He picks her up so she rests on his hip. For a second he sees Jemma nodding at him from the corner of his vision but she’s gone when he shifts his eyes. He gives his daughter a weak smile.

“She wanted us to save the world.” He looks May in the eye.

“So that’s what we’re going to do.”

-x-

Sarah helps him smooth out the crumpled plans, and piece back together the torn ones.

She’s always been a fan of jigsaw puzzles. This is all nothing more than a game to her.

Though sometimes he sees a gravity in her eyes and thinks she understands more than she lets on.

When he gets discouraged she gives him a hug and tells him to keep on going.

Her voice is so reminiscent of Jemma’s but instead of making him cry, it makes him smile.

-x-

The nightmares are the worst part of it.

He sees Jemma and Sarah and they’re both dying and there’s nothing he can do.

Then he wakes up and he realises it’s not a nightmare at all.

-x-

The only thing that keeps him going is the fact that, eventually, they’ll break out of this cycle.

Fitz has grimly accepted that they won’t be able to stop the world ending in this time, that Jemma is gone and that soon Sarah will follow. That she will meet a man and have a child called Deke whom them future selves will find again. He still doesn’t like it, and it gives him nightmares, but he has accepted it because it is the only motivation he has. It’s what gets him up in the morning, what keeps him going, what keeps him testing and retesting all over again.

Sarah grows and looks more and more like Jemma every day.

On her sixteenth birthday he gives her Jemma’s wedding ring, and in his head laughs at the fact that it’s her son who got it for them. He doesn’t tell her that, though, just gives it to her in a box he managed to scrounge from somewhere on the Zephyr.

“It was your mum’s,” he says unnecessarily. “I think you should have it.”

Sarah throws her arms around him, and when she pulls back her eyes glisten.

“I miss her so much,” she whispers. “Thank you for this, dad. Thank you.”

She slips it on her finger – a perfect fit.

She never takes it off.

-x-

When his time comes, he somehow thinks he knew it.

They have been fighting for so long, and all it takes is a stray bullet and he falls.  Other members of the resistance fall down beside him, wanting to help.

“Dad!”

Sarah’s panicked yell cuts through the crowed and it parts, making way for her. She falls to her knees beside him.

“No, no, no,” she murmurs, trying to staunch the flow of blood seeping much too quickly away from his body. “Dad!” She commands through her tears. “Stay with me.”

“Sarah…” he begins.

“You’ll be fine,” she grinds out, so very much like her mother. However, she is smart, so smart, and she knows that he won’t be. It’s written all over her face. She is so much like them.

“No,” he manages to wheeze out. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would. “It’s… okay…”

“It’s not,” Sarah says, swiping away the tears from her eyes. The ring glistens on her finger. “S’ not okay.”

“… is,” he manages to breathe out again. Blackness begins to creep in at the edges of his vision. It’s not scary, not like the other times he has almost died. “You… we loved you, yeah?” It takes an enormous amount of strength. “Loved you more than… anything.”

“Of course, I know.” A little sob escaped her mouth. “I love you too.”

“Owen…” Fitz manages to grind out. His time is coming soon, he must make sure this is done right.

Even though she is crying, Sarah manages to blush. “Dad-”

“He is _right,_ ” is all he says. There is more blackness now, less vision. He thinks he hears Jemma’s voice calling to him. He hopes there’s an afterlife, a place to reunite with her.

“Right about what? Dad! Right about what?” Sarah is hysterical now. She fully begins to sob. “What am I meant to do without you?”

This is important. His vision is limited to only her, now. Fitz thinks of the fate awaiting her, but thinks of the futures she will save. She has to go on.

It takes a Herculean amount of effort but he manages to find enough of his voice. “Keep… fighting. You have to… keep… fighting.”

And then he lets go.

-x-

Fitz is his thirty year old self, standing in the darkness.

Jemma is here, and she is not broken and bruised but her thirty year old self, too. She beams at him, coming towards him and kissing him deeply.

“Oh, Fitz,” she murmurs once she has pulled away, resting her forehead against his. “I have missed you.”

He has missed her, too. Missed her so much that his heart, broken for so many years, feels instantly whole again.

“Jemma,” he breathes.

“We didn’t save the world, did we?”

“No.” He cups his hands around her face, marvelling at the feel of her skin underneath his fingertips. “Not this time.”

“That’s alright,” she murmurs. “They will try again. They won’t give up.”

And he thinks of how many times they have lost each other, and how many times they made it back. He thinks of the universe that they defied so many times. This is no different; they will fix it. Together.

“Of course they won’t.” He kisses her again. “They don’t know how.”

Time is infinite. Fitz knows that, without a doubt, they won't stop until they save the world. It is, after all, what they do: fight against the universe that's constantly trying to tear them apart. 

To start breaking the trend now, when the lives of everyone hinge upon it, is something they just don't know how to do. 

They'll save the world. He tried and he couldn't, but it's okay. It'll start again and, eventually, they will get it right. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed that, if you were able to. Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way. I hope you have a lovely day!


End file.
